


Lows and Highs

by Stripe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stripe/pseuds/Stripe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feferi decides to take a little vacation on land to visit some of her lowblood friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lows and Highs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadySage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySage/gifts).



> Fulfilling this prompt:  
> "Something exploring the differences and similarities between Feferi and Aradia, and how it affects their relationship. I'll leave exactly what that means up to the writer's interpretation. Exploring it through plot is preferable, but introspective fic is fine as well."

_“Eridan, are you abso_ lute _ly shore that you’ll be OK taking care of her? It’s a pretty big job and all! I understand completely if you want to back out!”_

 _“Fef have some fuckin’ faith in me. It’s only three nights.”_

 _“Three nights can be longer than you’d sink!”_

 _“Sink? Sea-riously?”_

 _“Oh, I thought it was cute!”_

 _“Anyways I’m used to bein’ the one to catch her food. All I gotta do while you’re gone is go the extra step and bring it down there. I’m a seadweller, I’ll be fin.”_

 _“Well, OK! If you’re shore! Thank you so_ much, _Eridan!”_

 _“Yeah, go and hawe fun on land I guess.”_

 _“I will!”_

 _  
_

\-----------

When Feferi woke up that evening, she was at first surprised to find that she was not in her own recuprecoon, as she usually was. She was confused for only a moment; as she slowly unearthed herself from the slime, she could hear the gentle buzzing of bees and the frantic typing of fingers across a keyboard.

Sollux’s hive. That was right.

She was quiet at first as she stepped onto the floor, grabbing a towel nearby to dry herself off. What a bizarre sensation, to not have the seawater readily available! She tiptoed quietly around his respiteblock, trying not to disturb him as she gathered her clothes again. She slipped everything on quickly, the top, the skirt, all of the jewelry, and finally her circlet, indicating her as the empress to be. She tried to fluff out her hair, so that it would splay out as it did underwater, but gravity pulled it flat. She frowned, and figured she would just have to resign herself to a bad hair day.

She wandered around behind Sollux for a while, waiting for him to notice her, but whatever was on his computer was clearly taking up most of his attention. She couldn’t even tell what it was, though there was a lot of alternating blue and red. Typical.

After several minutes of being ignored, she finally let out a loud cough which, with her seadweller lungs, sounded more like somebody drowning.

Sollux whirled around quickly, the psionics in his eyes blazing to life. For a moment, Feferi was afraid she’d have to defend herself from her friend, but thankfully, the lights quickly died down once he recognized her. He relaxed, but there was still a certain tension to his shoulders that made Feferi unbearably sad.

“You’re up,” he noted.

“I am!” Feferi said this brightly, but she was not without her suspicions. “And I notice you’re still up, too! Did you sleep at all last night?”

“No.”

She frowned. “Why not? You could have woken me up if you wanted to get some shut eye! I wouldn’t have minded! I... I could have slept on the floor.”

Sollux snorted, but there was no humor in it. “A mustard blood forcing the heir apparent to sleep on the floor? They’d have me culled before you could say ‘the vast fucking glub.’” Feferi’s frown deepened – she really could deny that. Sollux smirked a little bit, baring his fangs, and continued, “Besides, I had shit to get done. I may be the best hacker around but even I can’t code this puppy in my sleep.”

Feferi crossed her arms. “It couldn’t have waited until tomorrow?” she asked. Any pretense of cheerfulness was gone from her voice now.

Sollux just rolled his eyes. “You write code that can blow up a computer and then tell me that it can wait until tomorrow. Anyways, if you want to get to AA’s place, we should start moving now. She lives out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere so it’s going to take a while.”

Feferi cocked her head to the side, watching as Sollux began to pack up his things and back up his files. “Why is that? Couldn’t she live in the city with you? I thought this was a popular place for lowbloods to live.”

“Yeah, sure, if you don’t mind space the restrictions.” Sollux powered down his computers and put his coding bees to sleep with the snap of a finger. “But AA’s interests don’t really allow that so she lives about as fucking far away from civilization as you can get and still get online.”

“So kind of like me?” Feferi asked, grin back on her face. She was eager to find something in common with Aradia already – she lived far away from other trolls, too, because of her duty to keep Gl’bgolyb quiet. Not even other seadwellers would dare to go as deep underwater as she lived – even her own moirail had only visited a couple of times!

But Sollux shook his head, a small grimace on his face. “No, not like you. You get to build yourself an underwater palace and get anything you want handed to you on a silver platter. AA’s forced to build herself a hut out where she can’t be culled as easily. There’s a difference.” Feferi’s grin fell immediately, and she began to tug at the bottom of her skirt to relieve some of the tension. That was not the response she wanted to get.

If Sollux noticed her discomfort, he did not apologize for it. He glanced out the window, judging the time by the dwindling light outside. “Anyways, she’ll be heading over to the meet up point soon. Better get you over there.”

Feferi nodded and followed him out the door. The natural grin on her face didn’t return for quite some time.

As Sollux had promised, it was a long journey to Aradia’s (especially, as he complained, when he couldn’t even fly there) and even though they were set to meet Aradia halfway, even getting that far was something of an ordeal. As they were walking through the city, Sollux told Feferi to hide her fins, in order to avoid heckling from the lowbloods, which she did with a good deal of confusion.

“But I’m the empress to be, shouldn’t they be happy to see me?” she asked, though she pulled a cloak over her head, regardless.

“Yeah, that’s why they would give you trouble. That kind of attitude doesn’t sit well with us lowly rust-bloods.”

“But you’re not a rust-blood.”

“Might as well be.”

Still, once they got out of the city, there was still a long way to go. They went through lawnring after lawnring, and Sollux briefly pointed out Karkat’s hive in a cul-de-sac as they passed by.

“It’s a shame he couldn’t have me over,” Feferi commented.

“KK’s not a fan of visitors.”

“Wonder why.”

Sollux shrugged and kept on walking. Feferi followed quickly – best not to linger, she figured.

The neighborhoods quickly gave way to wilderness, and Sollux informed Feferi briefly not to look any wildlife in the eyes. She reluctantly did as instructed. Finally, after walking through the wilderness for the better half of an hour, Sollux and Feferi caught sight of another troll in the distance. She was dressed simply, with a long, grey skirt and no accessories. Feferi allowed a grin to cross her face, and even though her feet were already tired from the walk, she began to walk a little faster, with just a little bit of a skip in her step. There was no doubt that the ram-horned individual in front of her could be anything more than apocalypseArisen, the rust-blooded text that had been so pleasant to talk to on Trollian.

Aradia watched Feferi as she approached, a small, funny little smile on her face. She made no attempt to meet Feferi halfway, instead letting the seadweller come to her. Feferi stopped just a few feet short, perched precariously on the tips of her toes as she realized that perhaps she should consider her boundaries. After all, this was the first time she had ever seen Aradia face-to-face, and it was hard telling what sort of odd customs low-bloods might have! So Feferi just smiled and nodded her head forward in a way that she hoped was not disrespectful.

“A-ray-dia!” she greeted. “It’s so _wonderful_ to fin-ally meet you in person! Your horns are gorgeous!” And indeed they were – they curved up and around themselves into a spiral that Feferi almost envied, with her own straight-back horns. Aradia’s face flushed with her rust blood, but she nodded her head and smiled.

“Thank you. Your horns look very nice as well.”

Feferi beamed back at her, and Aradia looked as though she were about to say something else, but at that moment Sollux caught up. He stood next to Feferi, his arms crossed. Aradia smiled and changed her question. “You didn’t have any trouble getting here, did you?”

“No. Nobody in the city really pays attention to other trolls. Too busy trying not to get culled. Typical.” He shrugged and rolled his eyes. Feferi cringed involuntarily at the word “cull,” but continued to smile a practiced smile. She wished the word would not carry such a negative connotation, but she didn’t know what she could possibly do about it.

“Well I’m certainly glad you made it alright,” Aradia said, and she took a step forward to wrap Sollux in a hug. Feferi quickly averted her eyes. Moirail or matesprit, she didn’t know. Both Aradia and Sollux were private with their feelings, so even though everybody knew they were something to each other, nobody knew what exactly that was. Still, she felt like watching would be intruding on something private.

The hug didn’t last long, and when Aradia pulled away, Feferi felt it safe to look back to them once again. Aradia was the first to speak, a wistful smile on her face. “You probably have coding to get back to, don’t you?”

Sollux shrugged. “You know how it is, AA.”

“Don’t forget to take care of yourself.” Aradia’s smile hardened into a look of suspicion, warning him.

Sollux simply waved her off, turning to go. “Yeah, yeah. No need to act like my lusus. Have fun, I guess.” This last line was addressed to both of them. Sollux turned his head slightly to give a nod toward Feferi, who flashed her most dazzling smile at him.

“Thank you, Sollux! And thank you for letting me spend the day at your hive!” As Sollux walked away, Feferi waved enthusiastically, her webbed fingers splayed out as far as they could to make sure he got the message. Aradia smiled and waved as well, though it was far more subdued. Her fingers swayed slowly back and forth, as though they were simply caught in a breeze.

A few moments later, Aradia turned to Feferi again, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry, but my hive is still quite a distance from here. We need to get going if we’re to make it back with any time before sunrise.”

“Of course!”

As Aradia had promised, the remaining walk to her house was just as far over as the walk to the meeting spot had been, and to make matters worse, there was no city to pass through that could distract Feferi with the various sights and people that passed by. Instead, it was hill after hill after hill, and for their own safety, Aradia had chosen a path that did not intersect with any hoofbeast grazing areas, or any sort of animal territory at all.

To make matters worse, Feferi’s feet started hurting a good quarter of the way on this second leg of the journey. Though she was fit enough to be in motion for an extended amount of time, her feet were not used to being pulled down by gravity all the time. But she didn’t complain, instead attempting to stimulate conversation as they went.

As she quickly found, Aradia was not much of a talker in person. If Feferi asked a question, she would certainly not ignore it, but she wouldn’t add more information than needed, or politely extend the same question back to keep the conversation going. It made the seadweller a little uncomfortable – was she doing something wrong, or did Aradia not know how to carry on polite conversation? She might have chalked it up to a lowblooded thing, but she had visited Tavros before spending the night with Sollux, and he had conversed eagerly, even if most of the conversations he started involved Fiduspawn or Pupa Pan.

Still, determined to keep her mind off of her aching feet, Feferi pushed the conversation on. She talked about whatever came to mind, and she quickly gave up asking prompting questions towards Aradia. After all, if she wasn’t going to get a good response, why bother? So instead the dialogue became more of a monologue as Feferi continued to chatter away.

“...And I’m _reel_ -y disappointed that I didn’t have the time to go and visit Nepeta! I think some of her cat puns are clever! But you know how lusii can be – always so demanding! Of course I’m not complaining, because I really do love Gl’bgolyb and she keeps me safe! But goodness, I really wish her voice wasn’t so _loud_!”

Aradia hummed a few times to show that she was still listening, which Feferi supposed was a good sign, but the other troll didn’t actually speak until they were finally within sight of her hive. She waited until Feferi had reached a pause in her talking to point it out, saying softly, “Well, here we are.”

Feferi immediately discarded her former train of thought to dash forward on her aching feet, attempting to get a good view of her friend’s home. Just as she had been told, it was really out in the middle of nowhere – she couldn’t see sign of civilization anywhere, even after turning to get a 360 degree view. Out in front were little dug up patches of earth, but there was still a clear entrance to the hive which was, comparatively, rather small. It was larger than Sollux’s hive, surely, but when Feferi thought of her own underwater palace, she suddenly felt oddly ashamed. She took a moment to frame her comments. Nothing insulting, she told herself. Surely this was a good hive for a lowblood!

“It... looks nice!” she said finally, making an active effort not to comment on the size or general state of disrepair. Though the hive looked sturdy enough, it was clear that there hadn’t been anybody making sure it stayed that way. Feferi wouldn’t really give it another few sweeps if she had to make a guess. She sincerely hoped that Aradia got things seen to by then.

“Thanks.” Aradia smiled and lead her inside, and Feferi carefully stepped around the giant holes in the earth. She didn’t ask what they were for, but she had a guess, based on Aradia’s interests.

The inside of the hive was no cleaner than the outside of the hive, and Aradia looked a bit sheepish at this. “Sorry for the mess,” she said, brushing some dust aside with her foot. It hardly made a difference. “I didn’t really have any time to clean up from my last expedition. I had another FLARP campaign with Tavros last night while you were with Sollux, and didn’t get back until early in the morning.”

“It’s fin!” Feferi assured her, even though she could feel a bit of the floating dust tickling the insides of her gills. She waved some of it away, hiding it in a motion to push back a stray strand of hair. “So what do you do for fun around here? I’m sure you must have lots of ways to keep yourshellf entertained!”

“Well, it can get rather dull around here,” Aradia admitted. “But I do like playing FLARP.”

Feferi made a face. “With Vriska?”

“She’s not that bad. Just a little over competitive, is all, but it’s not too surprising from a blue blood like her. I’m sure she’ll grow out of it.” Aradia said this quickly, but it sounded incredibly well-rehearsed. Feferi wondered just how much of it Aradia actually believed. Perhaps sensing skepticism, she quickly added, “Plus, she has Terezi to keep her in line.”

This did not instill Feferi with much confidence either, but she decided it was best to initiate a change in subject. She had dealt with enough Vriska-related feelings jams with Eridan to know that any time the spider troll was mentioned, things would eventually sour.

“But shore-ly you do things when you’re not FLARPing, right?” Feferi asked, smiling innocently.

“Well, I do a lot of archaeology if there’s nobody else around, which is frequently. But I’m sure that wouldn’t be of any interest to you...” Aradia looked away sheepishly, as though archaeology was somehow deeply offensive.

Feferi shook her head, allowing her natural curls to bounce from shoulder to shoulder. It may have been a bad hair day, but this didn’t stop her hair from curling wildly. “No! That sounds reel-y interesting!”

“Really?”

“Reel-y!”

Aradia smiled suddenly, but it was different from the polite smiles she had been offering before. She practically _glowed_ , and she moved with a sudden sort of comfort that Feferi hadn’t even realized had been missing. She was no longer the image of a lowblood doing her best to appease the empress to be – now she was just a girl talking excitedly to her friend about something she loved.

“I’m glad you think so! A lot of trolls I talk to don’t really see the joy in it, since most of our history is based on military conquests.” As she spoke, she began to flit around her hive, looking for something of interest. Feferi followed, glad to see her finally open up. “But if you just look at the artifacts, we have some really great cultural history too! For instance, I think I found some clay pots which were used as primitive buckets...”

Feferi felt the blood rush to her gills, but didn’t say anything. If Aradia wanted to be enthused about ancient buckets, then Feferi had no business in reprimanding her.

“But that’s not even the most interesting part!” Aradia had wandered into what Feferi figured was a storage room – there were dusty artifacts lining every shelf, stacked precariously on top of one another and on the floor because there was simply no other place for them to be. Aradia tip-toed careful, rehearsed steps among the stacks of artifacts before she carefully picked one out from a pile. Feferi watched the pile sway dangerously for a few moments before returning to its former, somewhat safer state. Aradia tip-toed her way back around until she was back at the door, next to Feferi once again.

“You could fill up an entire museum with this stuff!” Feferi said, her mouth agape. Even if she didn’t understand the importance of any of these things, the sheer volume was surely impressive.

“A museum would be nice.” Aradia glanced back over her piles, somewhat mournfully. “Though I guess it wouldn’t be as close to home then.”

  
“You could keep a few things in your room?” Feferi offered.

“I already do.” Before Feferi could comment on this, Aradia held out the thing she had pulled out. It was awfully dusty – apparently actually cleaning up ancient artifacts was not something that Aradia had considered doing. Feferi couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. To her eyes it just looked like a slab of stone with some indecipherable characters scrawled on the outside. She looked up to Aradia for an explanation. “This is part of something that I found a while ago. I’m still working on decoding it with Sollux, but it’s really fascinating, because none of the characters here look anything like old Alternian! But we think we’re making some headway on it. Sollux thinks it looks like some sort of code, maybe for a game or something?”

Feferi sneezed, and Aradia immediately drew the artifact back to keep it safe from seadweller snot. Feferi rubbed her nose and gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” she said. “But you say it’s a game?”

“That’s what he thinks,” Aradia affirmed as she carefully tip-toed her way back to the pile the piece of stone had come from in the first place. “There is a lot of talk of players, and we can’t think of anything else it could be!”

“Oooh, maybe one day we can all play together!” Feferi chirped.

Aradia gave her an interesting look for a moment – a mix between guilt and apprehension – before answering. “I’m sure we’ll be able to,” she said finally. “But that will be for a while yet, I think. In the meantime, do you want to see one of my dig sites? At least we can get out of this dusty old room!”

Feferi nodded. She couldn’t see the harm in it, after all. “Shore! That sounds like a lot of fin!”

“Fin?” Aradia cocked her head to the side, frowning. “I didn’t think that a dig site would sound like a fin.”

Feferi flushed, slapping her hands to her cheeks in mortification. “No, not fin! Fun! Oh, that’s embarrassing, I thought it would be obvious!”

To her credit, Aradia did not laugh – she simply smiled and, with an enthusiastic gait, lead Feferi out of her hive, to the giant holes marring her front yard. Feferi looked down into the hole – it appeared to be carefully dug out, and she suspected that Aradia had spent quite some time on these dig sites, particularly when she laid eyes on the equipment that the other girl was working with. Most of them were in some sort of state of disrepair – her shovel looked as though it had been taped together several times over – but even if they’d been in perfect working condition, Feferi was fairly certain that they would have made for a slow digging time anyways. Nothing was self-automated. She frowned as she thought of all the long hours Aradia must have spent just digging in these holes, one pile of dirt at a time.

“Don’t you have anything more efficient?” she asked. “Shorely Equius or somebody could make you better equipment!”

Aradia’s face soured at the name. “Equius would never take a commission from somebody like me,” she said with a huff. “I would probably taint him or something.”

Feferi’s face fell. Equius had always seemed perfectly pleasant when he spoke with her, but she supposed that she had never spoke to him about his view on lowbloods before. She had just assumed that a troll as calm and nice as him would just be nice to everybody.

She didn’t say any of this to Aradia, who had noticeably soured at the sound of the blue blood’s name. She was digging into the dirt with her shovel in such a manner that Feferi might have though that the soil had committed some significant crime against her – she stabbed the shovel into the ground with angry grunts and flung dirt haphazardly over her shoulder. Once again, it was time for a change in subject.

“So what have you found here?” Feferi asked, coughing lightly as she felt the dirt hit her gills. “You’ve been digging down her for so long that shore-ly you’ve found some really amazing things!”

Aradia halted her digging, and turned back to face Feferi, her temporary rage shifted into a surprise. “Well, no,” she admitted. “I don’t think there were any ancient civilizations situated outside of my hive! I just dig here for practice. My actual dig sites are a lot further away from here.” A pause. “Oh, though I did find a really cool rock here once. It looks kind of like a skull if you squint at it.”

“That, uh,” Feferi took a moment to clear her throat again. She was beginning to reach the conclusion that seadweller gills were not really cut out for the dusty dig sites of rust bloods. “Sounds school!”

“School?”

“Cool, only school.” Another cough. “Like a school of fish!” Feferi had to admit that was a bad one, even by her standards. She couldn’t quite bring herself to care, however; with every breath of air she drew, she also inhaled a large quantity of dust that was cutting off her oxygen. She had assumed it was just a minor inconvenience at first, but as she continued to breathe, the dust continued to accumulate, and she was beginning to get woozy. Her vision swam, and she was finding it hard to think clearly.

It occurred to her for one, terrible moment that perhaps this was actually some sort of ploy to depose her because she was the next in line for the throne, but – no of course that was ridiculous. Aradia didn’t support the Condesce, and the look on her face was of concern rather than victory.

“What’s wrong?” Aradia asked, her eyebrows drawn together.

Feferi pointed to her gills, hoping to save some of her breath, and then elaborated in a choked voice, “Dust.”

Aradia understood immediately and she quickly began to lead Feferi out of the dig site, one arm around her waist to keep her upright as they shuffled along. Feferi considered how lucky she was – most trolls wouldn’t be so kind. She shuddered to think of what might have happened had this been a blue blood like Vriska. She would have been spiderfood in an instant.

Aradia lead her back into her hive, moving as quickly as Feferi would allow. Once they were inside, Aradia sat her down in the front hallway and rushed off to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. She came back within a minute, holding the water out for Feferi to drink. Feferi gratefully took the glass and stared at it for a moment to admire the clear, pristine water inside. Then, without a second thought, she splashed the entire glass over her face, relishing in the feeling of the water passing her gills. She let out a sigh of relief.

“I’m very sorry about that,” Aradia said, looking sheepish. Her face was practically her blood color, though whether it was from physical exertion or embarrassment, Feferi was unable to tell. “I don’t know much about seadwellers, so I didn’t think that it would be a problem.”

“It’s fin!” Feferi assured her. “I didn’t know either, so you’re in the clear!”

Aradia bit her lip. “And you won’t have me culled or anything?”

Feferi again flinched at the word. Why did it always have to sound so ugly? She still couldn’t believe the number of times it was brought up among the lowbloods she’d stayed with, either. Sollux had mentioned it numerous times just in one morning, and Tavros, who she had visited the night before, had always nervously joked about how he wasn’t mean enough to avoid it, how he’d be dead before seven sweeps. From what she’d seen the entirety of the existence of a lowblood focused around making it to adulthood and staying alive.

Something had to be done about it.

“Of course not!” she insisted. “You kelped me! That would be a terrible way to repay the favor.” Feferi huffed, crossing her arms, as though she were offended that Aradia would even think such a thing.

Aradia looked visibly relieved by this news, and she let out a huge sigh. “Still, I’m sorry about that it happened. You probably aren’t all that interested in archaeology to begin with.” Aradia took a seat next to Feferi, who was about to protest and say that, no, archaeology was absolutely _fascinating_ , but before she got the chance, Aradia continued speaking. “So what do you do all day? Do you live around a lot of seadwellers?”

Feferi shook her head. “Not really. My lusus scares them away. I guess I can’t really blame them, though – she _is_ kind of big!” Feferi threw up her arms at the end, smiling again. The water had done wonders for her mood. “Usually the only other troll I see is Eridan, and that’s only when I go to the surface to...” To fetch the dead lusii of other trolls? Probably not the best way to word it. “To get food for her. He almost never goes underwater, you know! Pretty lousy seadweller if you ask me!”

Aradia put a hand up to her mouth and giggled at this. “So you’re kind of like me, then! Only without the FLARPing.”

Feferi made a face. “If the only troll I got to see was Vriska, I’d rather die!”

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Aradia said, though she didn’t bother to stick up for Vriska this time. “There are a lot of other trolls that FLARP. Tavros is my partner in Team Charge, after all!”

“That wouldn’t be so bad, then,” Feferi agreed. She hesitated for a moment, then asked the next question. It had been on her mind for longer than she cared to admit. “Does Sollux ever come out to see you? He seemed to know the way here pretty well.”

Aradia shrugged. “Sometimes, but he’s usually very busy with coding. Besides, he likes talking over Trollian more than he does face to face contact.”

“I can see that.”

“But you never answered my question,” Aradia said, changing the subject again. “What do you do under the sea all the time if you don’t FLARP or dig things up? Are you always feeding your lusus?”

Feferi made a face – she didn’t want to even think of how terrible it would be to bring lusii to Gl’bgolyb all night long. “Oh cod no! That usually only takes an hour or so, and that’s if it’s a bad night!”

“Then what do you do?” Aradia leaned forward, interested.

“Whale... I talk to other trolls online a lot!” Feferi started, grinning. But of course Aradia knew that – how else would they be friends? “But when I’m not online, I usually just swim around! There are a lot of really neat places under the water. It’s such a shame that you don’t have gills, or I’d take you to see them!”

Aradia clutched the sides of her face, near her ears, grimacing at the very thought. “Gills would make excavations difficult,” she noted. Feferi smiled sheepishly. Of course it was too soon to forget about how poorly she had taken to the dirt.

“True! I _suppose_ there are pros and cons.” She shrugged at this – to be honest, she would give up the ability to dig for old dead things in order to swim any day. She cast her mind back to her activities at her hive, trying to continue the conversation. “Oh, I also spend a lot of time taking care of animals underwater!”

“You do?” Aradia looked surprised. “Why?”

Feferi hesitated. She couldn’t truthfully say it was because the aquatic animals _needed_ her help. She pretended, of course, but she wasn’t foolish enough to actually believe her own roleplaying fantasies. “I guess it’s just nice having them around! Plus, it’s kind of fun to act like a lusus for them. Don’t you want to keep any animals around?”

Aradia made a funny face at this, the lovechild of look of horror and a grimace. “Most of the animals here would probably kill me,” she admitted. “We aren’t as lucky here on land.”

“That’s a shame.” Feferi frowned. “I’m shore that the animals underwater would love you! Except for the sharkbeasts, I guess, and the sea goats, but they never come out that deep! They mostly feed on landwellers who get too close to their territories! Or fish. Mostly fish, actually.”

“That’s reassuring,” said Aradia, and for a moment, Feferi thought she was joking. However, her tone was earnest, and she continued, saying, “If there are only two dangerous things in the water, then you must be quite lucky!”

Feferi giggled. “I guess so!”

The two continued to chat like this for a while, comparing the various pros and cons of living on land and underwater, of being a lowblood and a seadweller. Feferi complained at the lack electronics that functioned well underwater, and Aradia complained at the lack of any decent supplies at all. Aradia fetched some snacks from her fridge, as they exchanged gossip about the various trolls they were acquainted with, of the blackrom and redrom ups and downs. Feferi complained about how unsympathetic of a moirail Eridan could be, and Aradia sympathized accordingly. However, as soon as Feferi was about to broach the question of “pale or pail?” for Sollux, Aradia changed the subject.

“How do you keep your hair looking so gorgeous?” Aradia asked, tilting her head to the side. Feferi took a glance down at her curls, testing them with a flick of a finger. It trembled sadly – for a moment, she thought that Aradia might have been joking. Yet as Aradia continued to speak, her tone was earnest and honest. “I can never seem to keep mine under control, but yours looks so pretty, even after you nearly suffocated. And it’s even longer than mine is!” Aradia looked at Feferi in awe, and Feferi could feel her gills warming with a sudden rush of blood.

“Well, I don’t really give it much thought! Maybe it has something to do with the salt water? I didn’t even think it looked that good today...” As Feferi spoke, she could see Aradia’s face fall, and she realized how rude she was being. “Though your hair looks fin, too!”

“Just fin?” Aradia repeated. Feferi didn’t know how intentional her use of the fish pun was.

“I mean, it looks _great_!” she amended. Aradia still did not look convinced, so Feferi added, “But if you like, maybe I can do your hair for you! It will probably start to get light soon, so we should stay indoors, right?” She assumed this was what normal trolls did, at least. Underwater, the sun did not hold such a strong effect, though she usually adapted her sleeping schedule to that of her friends, for convenience’s sake.

Aradia brightened up again. “That sounds nice. Maybe we could go to my respiteblock, then. I have at least a hair brush there, and then after you finish, we can retire for the night? You’ll need to get up early if you want to get back to the ocean on time.”

Feferi sighed. She knew it was true – if she stayed too long, then Eridan would no doubt use it as more reason to commit mass homicide of the landdwellers, which was the last thing she wanted to do. She had vastly enjoyed her time here, and she wanted to give her moirail only good stories of the landdwellers so that perhaps one day he might give up on his dreams of genocide.

They walked up the steps to Aradia’s respiteblock, which Feferi was mostly expecting to be the same as one of her storage rooms. Yet she was shocked to find it very nicely organized – there were a few dice, no doubt used for FLARPING, sitting next to her computer, and a giant FLARP poster stood as the center piece to the wall. Lining one shelf was a number of music boxes, but apart from that, there seemed to be little sign of her archaeological endeavors. Well, there was one other thing...

“I like your Indiana Jones poster!” Feferi commented with a grin. Aradia glanced back at the poster in question and smiled as well, though she looked a little embarrassed as well, plucking at the sides of her skirt.

“Thank you,” she said, and Feferi wondered if she was imagining that rust blush across her cheeks.

“But enough dilly-dallying! Now let me see that hairbrush!”

Aradia nodded and opened a drawer near her husktop, pulling out a single brush which had certainly seen better days. But it was no matter – after all, a hair brush was a hair brush!

Aradia took a seat on the floor, carefully tucking her knees down underneath her, exposing her back without question. Feferi was struck by this for a moment – it was a very bold move to give another troll your back – but she didn’t question it. After all, she would have done exactly the same thing. Aradia was not a highblood, looking for every turned back so she could put a knife in it. She was lowest of the lows. She wouldn’t have been able to survive without some sort of help.

Feferi immediately got to work on brushing out Aradia’s hair – made of waves rather than curls. Feferi actually found it quite beautiful once it was properly brushed out. The gentle slopes reminded her of the waves on a calm soothing night, when the breeze was blowing just right and not a single storm cloud was in sight. To be honest, she almost preferred it to her own hair, full of corkscrew curls and the wild currents of an ocean upset. It was less chaotic.

The only real issue with Aradia’s hair seemed to be at the spot where her horns connected to her skull. Where as Feferi was used to hers sticking straight up, completely out of the way, Aradia’s horns looped right back down. It might have looked elegant, but if a single strand of hair got caught in the horn, then it was hopeless. And there was far more than just a single strand tangled in Aradia’s horns. Many minutes were spent tugging and pulling at tangled knots, trying to salvage them from the whirlpool of the horns. To minimize the pain, Feferi continued talking.

“So what do you want to do in the future, Aradia?” she asked, babbling away as she considered just cutting out a strand completely. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently, you know! I have the chance to be empress one day, so if I don’t mess up, then I really need to think about what I’m going to do with the empire! I’ve been reading up on some of the revolts and stuff, and I reel-y want to try and avoid them from happening again. It’s been getting kind of stressful, to be honest!”

Aradia let out a low hum to show she was paying attention, but otherwise said nothing.

“I just feel like there is a lot of expectation on me, whether it’s expectation to die or whether it’s expectation that I go out into deep space and take over from Her Imperious Condescension herself! And not that I don’t want to take over, because I think she’s a horrible empress, but I feel like my life is already set out in front of me, you know?” Feferi let out a sigh, running the brush slowly through Aradia’s hair. “But what about you? You can basically do whatever you want, right? Low bloods don’t have any kind of pressure to act like this or that. You can just act on your interests! So are you going to become a real life Indiana Jones or what?”

It took Aradia quite a long time to answer this question, and Feferi was about to change the topic when finally she spoke, her voice little more than a whisper. “I won’t live long enough to achieve anything like that.”

Feferi’s face fell. She had a bad tendency of forgetting just how short lowbloods’ lifespans were, especially in comparison to her own. “I’m sure that’s not true!” she said. “A lot of lowbloods accomplish some really important things while they’re alive! You have time-”

“That’s not what I meant,” Aradia said, cutting her off. Her voice was uncharacteristically low and dead. “I’m not going to be alive much longer. Not even another sweep. Something bad is going to happen, and nothing can be done to stop it. That’s what they’ve told me.”

“That’s horrible!” Feferi stopped brushing Aradia’s hair altogether, troubled by the things her friend was saying. “I don’t care who ‘they’ are! There’s always hope, so long as you keep looking on the bright side of life!”

“We’re all doomed in time,” Aradia assured her. “It’s okay. Things aren’t as bad as they sound.”

Feferi wanted to take Aradia by the shoulders and scream into her face that no, things were not okay, _nobody_ should be facing an early death with such a simplistic attitude, but she couldn’t find the words. Aradia seemed at peace with things and, to be honest, perhaps there was a certain bit of relief that came with knowing there was no future to worry about.

She set the brush to the ground, finished with Aradia’s hair for now, and glanced out the tinted window. The first rays of blazing sun were already visible on the horizon – if Feferi was to wake up on time tomorrow, it was time to go to sleep.

Aradia seemed to have the same idea. “It looks like it’s starting to be light out,” she noted. “It’s probably time that we went to sleep.” Beat. “It’s a shame, though. My hair feels so nice now; I hate to have to undo it so soon.” Aradia ran her fingers through her now smooth, untangled hair.

“It doesn’t really take much to get your hair that nice, though,” Feferi assured her. “You just need to brush it!”

Aradia gave a non-committal shrug; it seemed that she did not value smooth hair quite enough to warrant spending the time every day to brushing through it all. Instead, she said, “You can use my recuprecoon. I made sure the slime was fresh and everything.”

Feferi was quick to react, shaking her head violently. “No, no!” she insisted. “I couldn’t do that! It’s your recuprecoon, so you should be the one to use it!”

“It’s really not a problem,” Aradia assured her, and she stood up. “I don’t get daymares as badly as some trolls. As a highblood, you need it more.”

“But shore-ly it must be uncomfortable...” Feferi stood as well, a concerned expression across her face. “And just because your daymares aren’t as bad doesn’t mean you don’t have them! It would be rude of me as a guest to make you sleep badly!”

“I have my music boxes,” Aradia explained.

“Your music boxes?” Feferi glanced over to the shelf on which said boxes were sitting. They were certainly old, based on the designs, but they seemed well maintained, and were nowhere near as dusty as the artifacts that Aradia kept downstairs. It seemed that these warranted some occasional cleaning.

“Yes.” Aradia walked over to the shelf, running her fingers gently along the edges of one of the music boxes, smiling. “I have a theory that before sopor was invented, trolls used music boxes to keep daymares away. They really are quite calming! So please don’t worry about me.”

Feferi still didn’t seem convinced, but she did have to admit that sleeping without sopor did not seem nearly as appealing to her as it apparently did to Aradia. She let out a sigh of defeat, and then smiled. “OK, if you say so!”

Aradia set up a little nest for herself underneath her poster of Indiana Jones as Feferi undressed for the slime. Circlet off first, then braclets, then skirt, then top, then slide right into the slime. She let out a contented sigh – the soothing effects went at work immediately. The strain on her feet from walking earlier in the day was alleviated almost immediately, and even her irritation at Aradia’s doom and gloom outlook simply soaked away.

She could already feel her mind slipping slowly and quietly away into slumber when she heard the first notes of the music box, tinkling away a familiar tune that she had never heard before. She breathed slowly, in and out, letting the slime soak her gills, and she smiled.

Everything was going to be okay.

\-----------

“So, Fef, howw wwere the landdwwellers? They treat you alright? I’ll skin ‘em all alivve if they didn’t.”

“No, they were all fintastic! But I’ve been thinking...”

“Yeah?”

“When I’m empress, I don’t reel-y thing that I want to be running Alternia like it is now! I’ll make some refoams – sorry, _reforms_ – and get rid of this whole caste system to begin with! It’s absolutely ridiculous, and I really understand that now. I’m no better than you or any other troll, and our society needs to understand that!”

“Wwha-”

“And this whole idea of ‘culling’ is absolutely terrible! Even the word is bad! When I become Empress I’m going to change the meaning altogether. Make it something positive! Everybody will care for everybody else, just like I care for my sealife!”

“An’ howw exactly do you expect to pull this off? There’s a status quo for a reason. You can’t just go an’ upset it for no reason.”

Feferi just smiled. “Watch me.”

**Author's Note:**

> This came out to be about 5,000 words longer than I was anticipating, haha. Still, it was a blast writing these two! I've always wanted to do something a bit more in depth about them, and this gave me the perfect opportunity to do so! Just wish I had a little bit more time to refine it.


End file.
